Honda Urban EV Concept looks the PERFECT Electric Urban runaround

The Honda Urban EV Concept – a new compact electric city car concept revealed at the Frankfurt Motor Show – is the perfect electric urban runaround. And it’s going in to production.

Car makers are piling in to electric cars like Lemmings over a cliff, with cars which are either electric versions of mainstream cars or cars which look like a design vision aided by recreational substances.

But the Honda Urban EV Concept, revealed at the Frankfurt Motor Show, turns that on its head, with a small electric urban runaround which takes terrific retro design cues to deliver an EV which will be perfect for city roads.

A bit shorter than a Honda Jazz, the Urban EV is built on a new Honda platform for electrified cars and, say Honda, previews a real production car scheduled to arrive by 2019.

The unselfconsciously retro design of the Urban EV works so well, with its big glasshouse, slim A-pillars, stout proportions suicide doors and a feeling that this is where car design should have gone.

It manages to couple that brilliant retro exterior with a simple, but very modern, interior with a pair of bench seats in different materials, contemporary wood highlights, floating dashboard and big panoramic display screen.

Although Honda say the Urban EV previews a production car for 2019, they’re not being forthcoming on what lies beneath the very appealing skin.

We hope it offers decent performance and a range which is at least 150 miles. If it does, Honda are on to a real winner.